


He is No One's Agent But His Own

by 0Rocky41_7



Series: Guinevere Lavellan: This Shit is Weird [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Rocky41_7/pseuds/0Rocky41_7
Summary: Lavellan finally catches up with the agent of Fen'harel and confronts a shadow of her past.Thought analysis of the Trespasser climax.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age)
Series: Guinevere Lavellan: This Shit is Weird [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1307045
Kudos: 6





	He is No One's Agent But His Own

**Author's Note:**

> So after re-watching Trespasser’s climax scene again last night I had to write a…character study I guess? There just so much that has to be going through Lavellan’s mind throughout each piece of that conversation that I wanted to address some of the larger personal beats (I did not address the larger implications because it would’ve been twice as long but rest assured Guinevere has Thoughts about the Evanuris).
> 
> [](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXGgCZEuQFAw&t=NDhhYTYxODIxOWE1YjA3Yjc0MzAyOTQ1ZjBjM2IyMWE1NGNmY2IzOSxPVEd6Z2J4VA%3D%3D&b=t%3ApAT1wv0SOEVxL2lavKPuKw&p=https%3A%2F%2Fimakemywings.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F190170031045%2Fso-after-re-watching-trespassers-climax-scene&m=0)

There is a certain kind of dream, where one follows a path which can only lead to a wretched end. One is aware—choked by fear and apprehension, body stubbornly jerking forward against every instinct to turn and flee. Despite the open knowledge that the path can lead only to some great horror, one’s feet move miserably on, unable to turn away from the path, pressing rigidly forward, like a cuckoo clock on a track. This was how Lavellan felt as her strike team moved through the maze of eluvians. Every piece of evidence—every yellowed note, every flaking mural, every muddled spirit—led her down a path which she fought at every turn, twisting and turning her face away so she did not have to see what lay at its end. She kept her eyes from its inevitable end until fate grasped her face and forced her to look and see the conclusion she had drawn well back into this adventure.

When the Viddasala accused Solas of working as an agent of Fen’harel, the terrible anticipation did not end, nor even climax. As awful as the idea was, Guinevere did not quite believe it. Not because it was impossible to imagine Solas in league with Fen’harel, but because she struggled to imagine him taking orders from _anyone_. Even with her, he had worked as a _partner_ of the Inquisitor, not as one of her soldiers or advisors to command. Still, she squeezed her eyes shut and would not see what waited for her at the end of the path.

No one else followed her through the final eluvian. Presumably, they could not—she could scarcely imagine any of her friends and allies turning coward now, after all they had been through together. Someone must have cut off their access to the network—or at least to that eluvian in particular.

_Why?_

It was there, among the forest of stone Qunari—to detailed for anything but beings that had once been _living_ —that Lavellan heard a voice she had not heard in years. The one that sang a siren song in her dreams, that pierced her breast with golden nostalgia, that stopped her in her tracks now. She turned towards the broken path and her step quickened to a run without thought. When Solas’ voice was followed by the shout of the Viddasala, Lavellan broke into a sprint, dodging the monstrous statues and leaping over crumbling stone, as desperate as she had ever been to stop the Qunari from causing Solas harm, in time to see Solas finish the Viddasala as he had the rest of her platoon. He did not even turn to look at her, to make her join her fellows in frozen attack.

There he was: Solas. This was the only thought that formed coherently in Lavellan’s mind; there was nothing else. _Solas, Solas, Solas._ If she alerted him to her presence, the dream would shatter and as terrible as it was, it was as close as she had been to him in years, and she would take the nightmare in exchange.

When she called out to him, there was a moment she thought he would not turn. He stopped, but she saw only his back, and his last words to her echoed in her mind.

_What we had was real._

What other lies had he told her?

But he did turn, and looked at her with a softness he had no right to, spoke to her with a gentleness that almost enraged her with the pain it sent throbbing through her heart. _There_ was the elf she had loved. How dare her remind her of it now? That the reunion for which she had yearned for without rest since the day he had vanished should come in this way—it was cruel, and yet again Lavellan felt at the whims of some arbiter of fate yanking her about on a string. The anchor seared her palm, aching out to her fingertips, as if to remind her. The pulses began quietly, but quickly became unbearable, worse than it had been even during the fight with the sareebas, until she fell to her knees, her moans and cries of agony breaking the placid silence of the ruins. Each time the burning pain went further up her arm, and squeezed her flesh as if the limb would simply burst apart. Her fingers buzzed constantly, and she knew she was losing feeling in them, even when the mark was still. Then, at once, it was over, without the violent bursts of energy that had been coming off it lately.

She feared Solas’ words, but she had to have them all the same.

“You’re Fen’harel.” The end was upon her, her feet stood at the culmination of the path, and she could no longer hide her face. The words dragged from her throat like thorns, and tore away some vital part of her with them. Lavellan marveled that her legs did not give way. The Dread Wolf of Dalish legend—how they did use him to warn each other! Don’t be too prideful, the Keeper warned, or Fen’harel will bring about your downfall. Don’t be foolish when straying from the clan, or the Dread Wolf will lead you into the woods and snap you up for dinner. Enact no violence towards your fellow elves, or you will be tricked into doing Fen’harel’s bidding. He stalked the dreams of naughty children and prowled the edges of Dalish encampments, forever looking for his chance to end the People for good. He sat alone, cackling madly over the trick he had played on the gods, dooming the elves to a millennium of oppression and loss.

With every warning her elders had given her, Lavellan had utterly failed to see when she was dancing to the tune of the Dread Wolf.

Her face was frostbitten with the absence of her _vallslin_ , which Fen’harel had stolen from her. She had allowed him to take them away! To strip her of Ghilain’ain’s mark, chosen to honor the Mother of Halla. What nasty joke had it been, for him to take them from her?

“Well done.” And yet—there was _pride_ in Fen’harel’s voice when he congratulated her on putting together the truth. In his eyes, a glint that suggested he was aware of how it had wounded her to do it. It was the voice he had once used to praise her for her progress in speaking and writing Elvish, or when she outmaneuvered him in one of their philosophical discussions, or when she mastered a new combat technique. It threw her back into those days so jarringly she wanted to shout at him to stop, stop thinking he could fool her back into that ignorant state. Worse, her traitorous heart longed to simply accept his front as the truth. To lie in the grass there with him and discuss the ruins, and the eluvians, and the Qunari, as they would have done then. It was herself she fought more than Fen’harel, and this time, she was determined not to lose.

“What is the old Dalish curse? May the Dread Wolf take you?” It seemed he should have been triumphant. He had fooled not only an unsuspecting and callow elf, but the leader and face of a powerful organization. Did it not behoove him to have the Inquisitor—the head of an international paramilitary organization commanding the support of Thedas’ Chantry—singing his tune? But if chaos was his goal—as it was always the goal of Fen’harel—why help stop Corypheus? Why not sabotage them? And why the distress in his face now? There was no need to continue playing as if he were her lover. His pain lured her in, but she resisted, leaning away from the desire to believe he was anything of what she had thought.

“And so he did.” Every inch of her burned, recalling his touch, and the humiliation nearly closed up her throat. She was a first! She was meant to be a keeper someday! She had been the Inquisitor! If she were not able to stop herself from falling to the Dread Wolf’s charms, what use was she? Every scolding, the light and the instructive and the harsh, that Keeper Deshanna had ever given her tried to etch itself into her brain at once, every time the Keeper had warned Guinevere might not be suited to being a leader. Bubbling under this, her memory of that first time in the Emerald Graves, the moon and the stars aglow above them, and Solas stretched out contentedly beneath her, the gasp of his breath in her ear, and the heat of his flesh.

_Ar lath, ma vhenan._

“I did not. I would not lay with you under false pretenses.” Then what did he call it! The lies he had told her! They did not speak much of Solas’ past, and Lavellan simply accepted it was not something Solas wanted to share. There had been a mutual trust there—she thought. Vivienne was keen to poke holes in Solas’ story, or point out how odd it was that he could give them so few details about his past, but Lavellan dismissed it—she would not demand he submit a personal essay to help them defeat the great evil threatening them. An elven apostate working with the Chantry had every reason to want to keep his past to himself!

And again—why did he bother with this game? Why not simply gloat over what he had done to her, humiliate her and move on? The anchor sparked and felt like it was melting through her hand. It passed, as it usually did.

“But you lied to me.” Now, Guinevere raised her eyes to Fen’harel’s. Anger was not something that gripped her often—her eldest brother Lucas had always told her she should use it more—but this was more than she could bear. Could the Dread Wolf not simply toss her aside? What need had he to string her along this way? “I _loved_ you.” It took all her control to leash the tremor in her voice, but she clenched her fists and willed it to be even. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have understood?”

That was when he looked away. As Guinevere had turned her face from the truth of Solas’ true identity, Fen’harel looked away from the reminder of how she had cared for him. It had not stopped him from leaving her before their final fight, and she did not imagine it would sway him back to her side now. This truth, the ineffectiveness of her love, was just another arrow in her chest. But the Dread Wolf had the grace to look ashamed, and that startled her. He had no reason to feel this way, unless he was not quite so dismissive of her as she thought.

“ _Ir abelas, vhenan_.” It was possible he was playing her again—wanting to soften her up to the truth of his identity while keeping her on his side, but that was a near impossible task—so why try? It was worse to think there was truth in what he had been before. That set Lavellan to the task of parsing out what of him and their relationship had been true, and what had been a trick. Easier to brush it all off as the deception of a cruel and hateful god.

_I have been trying to find some way to show you what you mean to me. For now, I can think of no better gift than the truth._

 _Then what I must tell you: the truth—your face. The_ vallaslin _._

Fen’harel had known from the beginning what her marks were—why tell her then? What was the point of coaxing her to trust him to strip away her _vallaslin_? Perhaps he possessed the base meanness, but it was a lot of work for something so petty, and had she not thought to herself afterwards, as she explained to Vivienne what had happened, that it seemed a sudden decision? Was it not possible that Solas had meant to tell her something else, and turned tail at the last minute?

“ _Tel’abelas_.” She stepped forward, and in a mirror, Fen’harel moved back, his eyes still on the ground, refusing to look at her. He stepped back, away from her. As if she had any power—as he had stepped back when she pleaded with him not to end their affair. “If you _care_ , give me the truth.” This time, her voice did not shake, but rang out firm and insistent, bordering on the voice of the Inquisitor.

And then…he did.

Only moments in it was so easy to imagine it was nothing more than one of their old discussions in the Inquisition, the kinds of lengthy, broad-reaching conversations they had on philosophy, morality, history, the elven people…But Fen’harel’s armor and the molten pain in her hand reminded of where they really were.

Two sharp instincts warred in Lavellan’s mind as she kept Fen’harel talking (Had it not always been easy, to get Solas to go on and on, prodded with the right questions? A simple way to entertain herself on their longer, duller journeys through Thedas.). Was it oversimplifying, to assume he was evil as she had always been taught and ignore everything he was telling her as the lies of a trickster god-mage? Or was it naïve to think there was truth in Solas, that the elves remembered wrong, and that he had not meant to doom them, but save them?

In the end, perhaps it did not need to be one or the other—Fen’harel might well be telling the truth, but that did not make him less dangerous. He was open about his plan to rip apart the Veil, destroying the world, and rebuilding it to support the Elvhen once more. It would have been child’s play to lie to her, but she did not believe he was.

They appeared to be nearing the end of his explanations—a point at which Lavellan was a loss as to where things would go—when the anchor flared again, once more dropping her to her knees, her screams shattering the stillness of the air. Fen’harel crouched before her and told what she knew already—that it was killing her. This seemed the least surprising of anything he had told her, and she barely reacted to it. Her death seemed insignificant in the face of the reality that _Fen’harel_ had let loose Corypheus, and that he meant to try in earnest to bring the world to ruin, nor did it seem especially unusual that the alien magic in her hand should kill her eventually. Ever since they had defeated Corypheus—but the mark had remained—Lavellan had looked on it with unease.

She supposed by the time Fen’harel told her he had led her there to put an end to the mark and save her life, she had decided to take his words at face value. For now, it seemed there was nothing else but to operate on the assumption he was telling ( _partially_ —she had no illusions he had told her everything, even without his blatant refusal to explain why he needed to destroy Thedas) the truth. That did not mean letting her guard down, but it gave her at least a base of understanding for what was happening. And it was difficult to deny the veracity of the anger and shame in his voice when he spoke of what the Evanuris had been—and how he had nearly destroyed the elves in his effort to free them. Doubly so when Lavellan thought back and realized she could not, as of yet, recall a single instance where Fen’harel had _lied_ to them. He had misled them a great deal, left things vague, allowed them to draw conclusions he knew to be false, but outright untruths? She couldn’t call up a single one. Why should that change now?

_You have a rare and marvelous spirit…in another world…._

_Why not this one?_

_I—_ can’t.

And if there had been truth in Solas then, it meant there was now—with every indication that knew exactly how atrocious what he planned to do was, but considered the ends a justification for the means. That meant he could be convinced. If there was a soul in him—rational, empathetic, with any sense of morality—it was possible to change his mind. If not—why had he so often encouraged her to be kind? He had looked on with approval as she went out of her way to help displaced citizens of Thedas, stopped to play with refugee children and tell them old Dalish tales, shown mercy on the rebellious mages. If there was nothing in Fen’harel but contrarianism and hate, why waste time on such things? It could have all been a trick, but it didn’t feel that way. No—if Solas was Fen’harel, he was not all the Fen’harel of elven legend. Guinevere leaped at this possibility, seizing it with both hands, no matter how foolish it might seem. She was _right_ , she was _sure_ of it—Solas was not lost, not yet.

Perhaps he too, walked that dream path, unable to pull away from a terrible end.

On her knees, looking up at him with her hand sparking and throwing off arcs of green magic that lashed the air around them and burned up her arm like bolts of electricity, Guinevere pleaded again with him.

“Solas—” She would not address him with that cursed title, “— _var lath vir suledin_!” His knowledge of Elvish in particular had fascinated Lavellan, and the long hours they had spent with Solas teaching her, guiding her hand, were among the memories of him she cherished most after his abrupt departure. There was tormented pleasure now, in being able to couch her plea in his own language, which he had taught her.

_Don’t go._

_It would be kinder, in the long run. But losing you would—_

“I wish it could.” His words were true, she could not believe he could manage to muster a façade that convincing. As he had claimed, he got no pleasure from grinding Lavellan’s heart deeper into the dirt. The tenderness with which he took her hand, quieting the pain for a moment, numbing a path along her arm, told the same story. It was nearer than he had been to her since he took away her _vallaslin_ , near enough for her to see the shape and the number of freckles on his face, for her to hear his breathing, halting and uneven. Each time they had been close since then, he had sought to keep distance between them, determined not to let Lavellan get close enough to touch. But he was there now, gripping her arm and he seemed to sway closer to her. _I can change his heart_ , she thought urgently, desperately. He did not need to become the monster the Dalish thought he was! The elf she loved was still there, lurking beneath the tortured mantle of Fen’harel. She leaned up, and Solas matched her, and for the first time since she had set foot through the eluvian, Lavellan felt her own power.

“My love.” Solas’ voice was just a whispered breath. When his lips met hers, she poured everything of her heart into it. If she could make him cleave to his memories of her, of the Inquisition, perhaps all was not lost. But he pulled away with that wretched look on his face and Guinevere’s heart fell into her feet. “I will never forget you.” He rose up and when he was no longer touching her, the pain of her disappearing anchor began to return.

“Solas!” He did not turn before stepping through the eluvian and then the pain exploded. Lavellan fell onto her side, howling as Solas’ spell took effect, dissolving her hand and every bit of her arm that the anchor had corrupted. Her vision began to blacken at the edges, white spots dancing before her eyes, and she writhed about on the stone, wishing with all her heart he had simply taken a blade to it. “Solas!”

Eventually it subsided to a tolerable level, and Lavellan saw her arm now stopped just above her elbow. The expanding anchor had left strange scarring creeping along her upper arm—twisting, vein-like weals proving that it would have continued to grow until it destroyed her. Cursing herself for taking so long, Guinevere scrambled to her feet and ran for the eluvian, promptly crashing into the glass. She pressed her hands against the cold solidness. Solas had closed off the other one, then—he did not want Guinevere’s companions to be with them when he spoke to her. A snort escaped despite the gravity of it all—Fen’harel was smart enough to know Cassandra, Dorian, and Vivienne would go for his throat without waiting for explanation, over his treatment of her alone.

Her friends…as the waves of pin-point fire in her blood waned, and the shock and trauma of Solas’ reappearance were wrested under her control, Lavellan recognized the harder task came now—telling everyone what had happened.

**Author's Note:**

> [On tumblr](https://imakemywings.tumblr.com/post/190170031045/so-after-re-watching-trespassers-climax-scene) | [On Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1031985)


End file.
